Physical Health Zambia Project #6187

Project Mosquito Nets

by Power of Love Foundation

Project Report | Jul 28, 2019
We Are Making Progress Toward Eliminating Malaria from Zambia

By Alka Subramanian | Executive Director

Home of Happiness Children

Rationale for Eradicating Malaria

Working to end infectious diseases like malaria is vital if we are to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Preventing malaria, in addition to saving precious lives, provides countries huge economic benefits by freeing up scarce resources for developmental projects, improving worker productivity, and increasing school attendance. In addition, it is important to keep young children safe from malaria as they haven’t yet developed the immunity needed to prevent malaria from progressing to a severe, life-threatening stage.

Zambian Response to Malaria

Zambia has set a lofty goal of eliminating malaria by 2021 and is making huge strides toward this goal. Since July 2017, the Medicines for Malaria Venture and the Zambia National Malaria Elimination Centre have been working together to improve severe malaria case management. These organizations are using bicycle ambulances, an innovative approach, to ensure timely treatment for children severely ill with malaria. This new approach is saving lives.

Our Response to Malaria

Globally, we lose a child under five years of age every two minutes to malaria even though this disease is both preventable and curable. Since a child’s immunity is not fully developed, malaria can be life threatening for young children, children living with HIV, and for HIV+ pregnant women. Child-friendly antimalarials are available, but those medicines are still not reaching the children that need them. In 2015, in Sub-Saharan Africa, only 1 in 5 children younger than 5 years old with malaria infection and fever were treated with a World Health Organization-recommended first-line treatment. Even fewer receive a quality-assured, child-friendly version. Prevention is always a better option than treatment, but in the case of young children and children living with HIV, prevention saves lives.

Insecticide Treated Nets: According to the WHO, sleeping under a mosquito bed net regularly is the most cost-effective method of malaria prevention. Each net can sleep up to four young children or two adults. Accordingly, we provided 5000 long lasting insecticide treated nets and education to children and families in Lusaka, Zambia in the first six months of 2019. If children do not get contract malaria, their immune system gets stronger, they stay healthy and miss fewer days from school. The provision of education, in addition to nets, significantly increases the chances of beneficiary families not contracting malaria

Plan for the next six months: Our goal is to provide an additional 5000-6000 nets in the next five months. Provision of 10,000 nets in 2019, will keep 20,000 adults or 40,000 young children malaria free.

Malaria Can Be Eradicated

With collective global effort, it is possible to end malaria in the next few years.

Thanks for giving the gift of health to thousands of vulnerable children and their families.

Provision of Nets in Zambia

Recipients of Nets and Education

Nets Provision in a Church

Links:

Permalink

May 12, 2019
Let's Pledge to Eradicate Malaria

By Alka Subramanian | Executive Director

A typical beneficiary

Happy Mother’s Day. On this Mother’s Day, let's pledge to eradicate malaria and make health care accessible to all children irrespective of where they live.

Zambia has set a lofty goal of eliminating malaria by 2021. According to USAID, this goal is ambitious but within reach. To help Zambia achieve this goal, our plan is to provide 9,000-10,000 insecticide treated nets and education to families vulnerable to malaria. Provision of 9,000 nets in 2019, will keep 18,000 adults or 36,000 young children malaria free (as each net can sleep up to four young children or two adults). The provision of education, in addition to nets, significantly increases the chances of beneficiary families not contracting malaria. Sleeping under a net every night during malaria season, helps keep both adults and children malaria free. However, the impact on the health of children under five years of age and HIV+ children is huge, as staying malaria free strengthens their immune system. This in turn, enables them to attend school regularly.

Here are stories of typical families who benefit from your support:

Kay is a 10-year old who lives with her mom and five siblings in a three-room home with no water. She lost her father when she was two months old. Her mom sells fish to earn a living and can barely afford three meals a day. Kay’s family has been receiving education and mosquito bed nets for the last nine years. Her family uses the nets as demonstrated, keeps them in good condition, and re-treats the nets with insecticide every six months. They have not contracted malaria since they started receiving and using bed nets regularly. Kay is a second grader who loves school and attends regularly. Her mom would like the program to continue in the community.

Dan is a 10-year old boy who lives with his family in an impoverished neighborhood in Zambia. His family regularly sleeps under mosquito bed nets during malaria season. Dan’s mom is happy that her family has been malaria free and that Dan is attending school regularly as his health has improved.

Thanks for giving the gift of health to thousands of children like Kay and Dan.

A Child with a Net

A net can sleep 3-4 young children

Links:

Permalink

Mar 10, 2019
How Effective Is our Malaria Prevention Program?

By Alka Subramanian | Executive Director

Women singing and praying to kick off a

In 2018, generous donors such as yourself helped raise over $20,000 for Power of Love's malaria prevention and education program. These funds were used to provide education and 8,500 long lasting insecticide treated nets to vulnerable populations in Zambia. To assess the effectiveness of nets provided, we gathered information from hundreds of beneficiaries and the results are given below.

Effectiveness of Mosquito Nets

To assess the impact of this program, we gathered responses from over 1200 beneficiaries via interviews and focus groups discussions in December 2017, February 2018, and October 2018. Here are some heartwarming numbers from the field:

No cases of malaria were reported amongst families in our sample.
More than 90% of recipients knew how to hang and use the nets properly.
Only 2% of families had the nets torn or damaged three months after use.
98% of families sampled had improved knowledge regarding malaria prevention, proper storage, maintenance, and re-treatment of nets.
On average three children were sleeping under a net.
Almost all families sampled indicated that they could use additional nets.
All families were grateful and would like this program to continue in 2019.

These findings confirm WHO's (World Health Organization) results that sleeping under a good quality mosquito bed net is one of the cheapest and most effective methods of malaria prevention. The WHO recommends that mosquito bed nets should be available to everyone and free of cost to eradicate malaria.

Next Steps

Over the last 11 years we have been able to provide over 33,000 nets and education to children and adults living with HIV, older people, HIV+ pregnant women, young children, and people infected with TB, as these populations are vulnerable malaria. For 2019, our goal is to provide 9,000-10,000 long lasting insecticide treated nets and education to impoverished communities in Zambia. Beneficiary communities are carefully selected based on need and the high transmission rates of malaria.

Zambia Can Be Malaria Free

A mosquito bed net can sleep up to four young children or two adults and lasts up to two years. This implies that a single net costing less than $5, can keep 3-4 children malaria free, healthy and in school. Since malaria can be fatal for young children, children living with HIV, and pregnant women living with HIV, it costs just a few pennies to save lives.

Zambia has set a lofty goal of eliminating malaria by 2021. According to USAID, this goal is ambitious but within reach. We are confident that our malaria prevention program will help Zambia reach its goal of eliminating malaria in the next 3-5 years.

Thanks for your caring and dedication to prevent malaria in Zambia.

Children with nets

A Nets use demonstration in a Church in Matero

Long-lasting insecticide treated nets

Links:

Permalink

‹ 1 ... 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 ... 25 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.